10 thoughts on “P12- Van Dyke

  1. I think its really interesting that Bacteriophage infection can occur through two different life cycles. Do you know how long each cycle typically is?

    1. Do you know if viruses that affect other organisms, including humans, go through a similar life cycle, or are these specific to bacteriophages?

      1. I’m sorry that comment was meant for the question above yours!! As far as I know these life cycles are specific to bacteriophage. I believe that their specific structure and function requires them to have these life cycles. Their structure includes phage tails which pierce the cell and repressor proteins that determine the life cycle of the phage, which are just a few examples. This is a really interesting question and I would love to look into it more.

    2. The length of each cycle is not known down to the second. Both vary in the length of time that they take to lyse their host cell. The most significant information on the length of time that I would focus on would be that lytic life cycles are going to complete their life cycle a lot quicker than that of the lysogenic life cycle. This is due to the genome of lysogenic phage being passed on from generation to generation of bacterial cells, until the repressor protein is removed causing the phage to lyse the cell.

    3. The length of each cycle is not known down to the second. Both of these cycles vary in the length of time that they take to lyse their host cell. The most significant information on the length of time that I would focus on would be that lytic life cycles are going to complete their life cycle a lot quicker than that of the lysogenic life cycle. This is due to the genome of lysogenic phage being passed on from generation to generation of bacterial cells, until the repressor protein is removed causing the phage to lyse the cell.

    4. The length of both cycles is not known down to the second. Both of these cycles vary in the length of time that they take to lyse their host cell. The most significant information on the length of time that I would focus on would be that lytic life cycles are going to complete their life cycle a lot quicker than that of the lysogenic life cycle. This is due to the genome of lysogenic phage being passed on from generation to generation of bacterial cells, until the repressor protein is removed causing the phage to lyse the cell.

  2. Why is it significant to compare the DNA of other phages to see similarities and differences?

    1. It is significant to compare the DNA of other phages to see the similarities and differences because it will allow us to see the different functions that this phage has. For example, after finding out the cluster of our phage, we can look into whether tail or head proteins are produced, how big that protein is, and how that impacts the reproduction and lysis of the phage. Overall, comparing DNA just provides a lot of information regarding the phages structure and function and how it relates to other phages in its cluster.

  3. The double stranded DNA in siphoviridae bacteriophage is significant because it allows us to look at how the phage transcribes and translates DNA into mRNA and proteins. There are also other viruses that do have RNA as a genome, so it is a differentiating factor in bacteriophage. Along with that, bacteria are composed of DNA, so when the bacteriophage invades the host cell, the phage genome won’t be seen by the cell as invading, as much as a bacteriophage composed of RNA would be.

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